The immediate precursor to today’s pro-Israel lobby began in 1939[i] under the leadership of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, originally from Lithuania. He created the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC), which by 1943 had acquired a budget of half a million dollars at a time when a nickel bought a loaf of bread.[ii]
In addition to this money, Zionists [adherents of “political Zionism,” a movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine] had become influential in creating a fundraising umbrella organization, the United Jewish Appeal, in 1939[iii], giving them access to the organization’s gargantuan financial resources: $14 million in 1941, $150 million by 1948. This was four times more than Americans contributed to the Red Cross and was the equivalent of approximately $1.5 billion today.[iv]
With its extraordinary funding, AZEC embarked on a campaign to target every sector of American society, ordering that local committees be set up in every Jewish community in the nation [for decades the larger majority of Jewish Americans had been either non-Zionists or actively anti-Zionist]. In the words of AZEC organizer Sy Kenen, it launched “a political and public relations offensive to capture the support of Congressmen, clergy, editors, professors, business and labor.”[v]
AZEC instructed activists to “make direct contact with your local Congressman or Senator“ and to go after union members, wives and parents of servicemen, and Jewish war veterans. AZEC provided activists with form letters to use and schedules of anti-Zionist lecture tours to oppose and disrupt.
A measure of its power came in 1945 when Silver disliked a British move that would be harmful to Zionists. AZEC booked Madison Square Garden, ordered advertisements, and mailed 250,000 announcements – the first day. By the second day they had organized demonstrations in 30 cities, a letter-writing campaign, and convinced 27 U.S. Senators to give speeches.[vi]
Grassroots Zionist action groups were organized with more than 400 local committees under 76 state and regional branches. AZEC funded books, articles and academic studies; millions of pamphlets were distributed. There were massive petition and letter writing campaigns. AZEC targeted college presidents and deans, managing to get more than 150 to sign one petition.[vii]
Rabbi Elmer Berger, executive director of the American Council for Judaism, which opposed Zionism in the 1940s and ‘50s, writes in his memoirs that there was a “ubiquitous propaganda campaign reaching just about every point of political leverage in the country.”[viii]
The Zionist Organization of America bragged of the “immensity of our operations and their diversity” in its 48th Annual Report, stating, “We reach into every department of American life…”[ix]
Berger and other anti-Zionist Jewish Americans tried to organize against “the deception and cynicism with which the Zionist machine operated,” but failed to obtain anywhere near their level of funding. Among other things, would-be dissenters were afraid of “the savagery of personal attacks” anti-Zionists endured.[x]
Berger writes that when he and a colleague opposed a Zionist resolution in Congress, Emanuel Celler, a New York Democrat who was to serve in Congress for almost 50 years, told them: “They ought to take you b…s out and shoot you.”[xi]
When it was unclear that President Harry Truman would support Zionism, Cellar and a committee of Zionists told him that they had persuaded Dewey to support the Zionist policy and demanded that Truman also take this stand. Cellar reportedly pounded on Truman‘s table and said that if Truman did not do so, “We’ll run you out of town.”[xii]
Jacob Javits, another well-known senator, this time Republican, told a Zionist women’s group: “We’ll fight to death and make a Jewish State in Palestine if it’s the last thing that we do.”[xiii]
Richard Stevens, author of American Zionism and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1942-1947, reports that Zionists infiltrated the boards of several Jewish schools that they felt didn’t sufficiently promote the Zionist cause. When this didn’t work, Stevens writes, they would start their own pro-Zionist schools.[xiv]
Stevens writes that in 1943-44 the ZOA distributed over a million leaflets and pamphlets to public libraries, chaplains, community centers, educators, ministers, writers and “others who might further the Zionist cause.”[xv]
Alfred Lilienthal, who had worked in the State Department, served in the U.S. Army in the Middle East from 1943-45, and became a member of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism, reports that Zionist monthly sales of books totaled between 3,000 and 4,000 throughout 1944-45.
Richard Stevens reports that Zionists subsidized books by non-Jewish authors that supported the Zionist agenda. They would then promote these books jointly with commercial publishers. Several of them became best sellers.[xvi]
Zionists manufacture Christian support
AZEC founder Silver and other Zionists played a significant role in creating Christian support for Zionism.
Secret Zionist funds, eventually reaching $150,000 in 1946, were used to revive an elitist Protestant group, the American Palestine Committee. This group had originally been founded in 1932 by Emanuel Neumann, a member of the Executive of the Zionist Organization. The objective was to organize a group of prominent (mainly non-Jewish) Americans in moral and political support of Zionism. Frankfurter was one of the main speakers at its launch.[xvii]
Silver‘s headquarters issued a directive saying, “In every community an American Christian Palestine Committee must be immediately organized.”[xviii]
Author Peter Grose reports that the Christian committee’s operations “were hardly autonomous. Zionist headquarters thought nothing of placing newspaper advertisements on the clergymen’s behalf without bothering to consult them in advance, until one of the committee’s leaders meekly asked at least for prior notice before public statements were made in their name.”[xix]
AZEC formed another group among clergymen, the Christian Council on Palestine. An internal AZEC memo stated that the aim of both groups was to “crystallize the sympathy of Christian America for our cause.”[xx]
By the end of World War II the Christian Council on Palestine had grown to 3,000 members and the American Palestine Committee boasted a membership of 6,500 public figures, including senators, congressmen, cabinet members, governors, state officers, mayors, jurists, clergymen, educators, writers, publishers, and civic and industrial leaders.
Historian Richard Stevens explains that Christian support was largely gained by exploiting their wish to help people in need. Steven writes that Zionists would proclaim “the tragic plight of refugees fleeing from persecution and finding no home,” thus linking the refugee problem with Palestine as allegedly the only solution.[xxi]
Stevens writes that the reason for this strategy was clear: “… while many Americans might not support the creation of a Jewish state, traditional American humanitarianism could be exploited in favor of the Zionist cause through the refugee problems.”[xxii]
Few if any of these Christian supporters had any idea that the creation of the Jewish state would entail a massive expulsion of hundreds of thousands of non-Jews, who made up the large majority of Palestine‘s population, creating a new and much longer lasting refugee problem.
Nor did they learn that during and after Israel’s founding 1947-49 war, Zionist forces attacked a number of Christian sites. Donald Neff, former Time Magazine Jerusalem bureau chief and author of five books on Israel-Palestine, reports in detail on Zionist attacks on Christian sites in May 1948, the month of Israel’s birth.
Neff tells us that a group of Christian leaders complained that month that Zionists had killed and wounded hundreds of people, including children, refugees and clergy, at Christian churches and humanitarian institutions.
For example, the group charged that “‘many children were killed or wounded’ by Jewish shells on the Convent of Orthodox Copts…; eight refugees were killed and about 120 wounded at the Orthodox Armenian Convent…; and that Father Pierre Somi, secretary to the Bishop, had been killed and two wounded at the Orthodox Syrian Church of St. Mark.”
“The group’s statement said Arab forces had abided by their promise to respect Christian institutions, but that the Jews had forcefully occupied Christian structures and been indiscriminate in shelling churches,” reports Neff. He quotes a Catholic priest: “‘Jewish soldiers broke down the doors of my church and robbed many precious and sacred objects. Then they threw the statues of Christ down into a nearby garden.’ [The priest] added that Jewish leaders had reassured that religious buildings would be respected, ‘but their deeds do not correspond to their words.’”[xxiii]
After Zionist soldiers invaded and looted a convent in Tiberias, the U.S. Consulate sent a bitter dispatch back to the State Department complaining of “the Jewish attitude in Jerusalem towards Christian institutions.”[xxiv]
An American Christian Biblical scholar concurred, reporting that a friend in Jerusalem had been told, “When we get control you can take your dead Christ and go home.”[xxv]
Zionist Colonization Efforts in Palestine
In order to reach their goal of a Jewish state in Palestine, Zionists needed to clear the land of Muslim and Christian inhabitants and replace them with Jewish immigrants.
This was a tall order, as Muslims and Christians accounted for more than 95 percent of the population of Palestine.[xxvi] Zionists planned to try first to buy up the land until the previous inhabitants had emigrated; failing this, they would use violence to force them out. This dual strategy was discussed in various written documents cited by numerous Palestinian and Israeli historians.[xxvii]
As this colonial project grew, the indigenous Palestinians reacted with occasional bouts of violence; Zionists had anticipated this since people usually resist being expelled from their land.
When the buyout effort was able to obtain only a few percent of the land, Zionists created a number of terrorist groups to fight against both the Palestinians and the British. Terrorist and future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin later bragged that Zionists had brought terrorism both to the Middle East and to the world at large.[xxviii]
By the eve of the creation of Israel, the Zionist immigration and buyout project had increased the Jewish population of Palestine to 30 percent[xxix] and land ownership from 1 percent to approximately 6-7 percent.[xxx]
This was in 1947, when the British at last announced that they would end their control of Palestine. Britain turned the territory’s fate over to the United Nations.
Since a founding principle of the UN was “self-determination of peoples,” one would have expected to the UN to support fair, democratic elections in which inhabitants could create their own independent country.[xxxi]
Instead, Zionists pushed for a General Assembly resolution to give them a disproportionate 55 percent of Palestine.[xxxii][xxxiii] (While they rarely announced this publicly, their plan, stated in journal entries and letters, was to later take the rest of Palestine.[xxxiv])
U.S. Officials oppose creation of Israel
The U.S. State Department opposed this partition plan strenuously, considering Zionism contrary to both fundamental American principles and U.S. interests.
For example, the director of the State Department‘s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs consistently recommended against supporting a Jewish state in Palestine. The director, named Loy Henderson, warned that the creation of such a state would go against locals’ wishes, imperil U.S. interests and violate democratic principles.
Henderson emphasized that the U.S. would lose moral standing in the world if it supported Zionism:
“At the present time the United States has a moral prestige in the Near and Middle East unequaled by that of any other great power. We would lose that prestige and would be likely for many years to be considered as a betrayer of the high principles which we ourselves have enunciated during the period of the [second world] war.”[xxxv]
When Zionists pushed the partition plan in the UN, Henderson recommended strongly against supporting their proposal, saying that such a partition would have to be implemented by force and was “not based on any principle.” He warned that partition “would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future…”
Henderson elaborated further on how plans to partition Palestine would violate American and UN principles:
“…[Proposals for partition] are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the [UN] Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based. These proposals, for instance, ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule. They recognize the principle of a theocratic racial state and even go so far in several instances as to discriminate on grounds of religion and race…”[xxxvi]
Zionists attacked Henderson virulently, calling him “anti-Semitic,” demanding his resignation, and threatening his family. They pressured the State Department to transfer him elsewhere; one analyst describes this as “the historic game of musical chairs” in which officials who recommended Middle East policies “consistent with the nation’s interests” were moved on.[xxxvii]
In 1948 Truman sent Henderson to the slopes of the Himalayas, as Ambassador to Nepal (then officially under India).[xxxviii] (In recent years, at times virtually every State Department country desk has been directed by a Zionist.)[xxxix]
But Henderson was far from alone in making his recommendations. He wrote that his views were not only those of the entire Near East Division but were shared by “nearly every member of the Foreign Service or of the [State] Department who has worked to any appreciable extent on Near Eastern problems.”[xl]
He wasn’t exaggerating. Official after official and agency after agency opposed Zionism.
In 1947 the CIA reported that Zionist leadership was pursuing objectives that would endanger both Jews and “the strategic interests of the Western powers in the Near and Middle East.”[xli]
Ambassador Henry F. Grady, who has been called “America’s top diplomatic soldier for a critical period of the Cold War,” headed a 1946 commission aimed at coming up with a solution for Palestine. Grady later wrote about the Zionist lobby and its damaging effect on U.S. national interests.
“I have had a good deal of experience with lobbies but this group started where those of my experience had ended,” wrote Grady. “I have headed a number of government missions but in no other have I ever experienced so much disloyalty…. [I]n the United States, since there is no political force to counterbalance Zionism, its campaigns are apt to be decisive.”[xlii]
Grady concluded that without Zionist pressure, the U.S. would not have had “the ill-will with the Arab states, which are of such strategic importance in our ‘cold war’ with the soviets.”[xliii]
Former Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson also opposed Zionism. Acheson‘s biographer writes that Acheson “worried that the West would pay a high price for Israel.” Another author, John Mulhall, records Acheson‘s warning of the danger for U.S. interests:
“… to transform [Palestine] into a Jewish State capable of receiving a million or more immigrants would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East.”[xliv]
The Joint Chiefs of Staff reported in late 1947, “A decision to partition Palestine, if the decision were supported by the United States, would prejudice United States strategic interests in the Near and Middle East” to the point that “United States influence in the area would be curtailed to that which could be maintained by military force.”[xlv]
The Joint Chiefs issued at least sixteen papers on the Palestine issue following World War II. They were particularly concerned that the Zionist goal was to involve the U.S.
One 1948 paper predicted that “the Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the United States] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.”[xlvi]
The CIA stated that Zionist leadership was pursuing objectives that would endanger both Jews and “the strategic interests of the Western powers in the Near and Middle East.”[xlvii]
The head of the State Department‘s Division of Near Eastern Affairs, Gordon P. Merriam, warned against the partition plan on moral grounds:
“U.S. support for partition of Palestine as a solution to that problem can be justified only on the basis of Arab and Jewish consent. Otherwise we should violate the principle of self-determination which has been written into the Atlantic Charter, the declaration of the United Nations, and the United Nations Charter – a principle that is deeply embedded in our foreign policy. Even a United Nations determination in favor of partition would be, in the absence of such consent, a stultification and violation of UN‘s own charter.” [xlviii]
Merriam added that without consent, “bloodshed and chaos” would follow, a tragically accurate prediction.
An internal State Department memorandum accurately predicted how Israel would be born through armed aggression masked as defense:
“… the Jews will be the actual aggressors against the Arabs. However, the Jews will claim that they are merely defending the boundaries of a state which were traced by the UN.… In the event of such Arab outside aid the Jews will come running to the Security Council with the claim that their state is the object of armed aggression and will use every means to obscure the fact that it is their own armed aggression against the Arabs inside which is the cause of Arab counter-attack.”[xlix]
And American Vice Consul William J. Porter foresaw one last outcome of the “partition“ plan: that no Arab state would actually ever come to be in Palestine.[l]
Citations for this excerpt, which also contain additional information, are available in the book. Discounted bulk orders can be obtained by writing orders@ifamericansknew.org
Notes.
[i] “American Zionist Movement (AZM),” Jewish Virtual Library, 2008,
The executive secretary of AZEC was a man named Isaiah Kenen, who went on to found today’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), rated as one of the most powerful lobbying organization in the U.S. Grant Smith, in his book Declassified Deceptions: the Secret History of Isaiah L. Kenen and the Rise of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, 2007) describes Kenen‘s activities in detail, particularly how he worked to elude U.S. legal requirements that he register as a foreign agent.
[iii] Elmer Berger, Memoirs of an Anti-Zionist Jew (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1978), 9.
Originally there had been two organizations, the United Palestine Appeal (the main Zionist fund-raising effort in the U.S.) and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which was dominated by non-Zionists and which raised more money. Its purpose was to “provide assistance to Jews in the countries in which they lived, hoping to facilitate their eventual integration into those societies.” Berger reports, “Never at a loss for maneuver – or dissembling– however, the Zionist manager persuaded the ‘big givers’ that a ‘united campaign’ would be more efficient than the competing, double campaigns,” and they managed to push through the creation of the United Jewish Appeal.
[iv] Christison, Perceptions, 73; Wilson, Decision on Palestine, 134.
Wilson reports that Zionists, wishing to pressure the U.S. government to support partition and end its arms embargo, raised $35 million (the equivalent of $349 million today) in just two weeks for the United Jewish Appeal in just two weeks.
[v] Neff, Pillars, 23; Tivnan, The Lobby, 24.
[vi] Tivnan, The Lobby, 24
[vii] Neff, Pillars, 23.
[viii] Berger, Memoirs, 11.
In 1947 the American Council for Judaism submitted a 27-page memorandum to the UN opposing Zionism. ACJ President Lessing J. Rosenwald railed against what he termed Zionists’ “anti-Semitic racialist lie that Jews the world over were a separate, national body.”
Smith, Declassified Deceptions, 29.
[ix] Stevens, American Zionism, 101.
[x] Berger, Memoirs, 17.
[xi] Berger, Memoirs, 22.
[xii] Wright, Zionist Cover-up,25.
Wright was General staff G-2 Middle East specialist, Washington, 1945-46; Bureau Near East-South Asian-African Affairs Department of State, since 1946, country specialist 1946-47, advisor U.N. affairs, 1947-50, advisor on intelligence 1950-55. He retired from the State Department in 1966.
[xiii] Lilienthal, What Price Israel, 63.
[xiv] Stevens, American Zionism, 24.
[xv] Stevens, American Zionism, 22.
[xvi] Stevens, American Zionism,22-23.
[xvii] Neff, Pillars, 23.
Herbert Hoover, “Message to the American Palestine Committee, January 17, 1932,” The American Presidency Project,
Joseph M. Canfield, The Incredible Scofield and His Book (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2004).
Researchers may wish to explore an interesting though speculative discussion about what might have been an earlier effort by Zionists to influence Christians. Many years before AZEC targeted Christians, an annotated version of the bible known as the Scofield Reference Bible had been published, which pushed what was a previously somewhat fringe “dispensationalist“ theology calling for the Jewish “return” to Palestine.
Some analysts have raised questions about Cyrus Scofield and how and why the Oxford University Press published his book. Scofield, a Texas preacher who had been something of a shyster and criminal and had abandoned his first wife and children (when his wife then filed for divorce, the court ruled in her favor, noting that Scofield was “…not a fit person to have custody of the children”). (Canfield, Incredible Scofield, 113) He mysteriously became a member of an exclusive New York men’s club in 1901. Biographer Joseph Canfield comments:
“The admission of Scofield to the Lotus Club, which could not have been sought by Scofield, strengthens the suspicion that has cropped up before, that someone was directing the career of C. I. Scofield.” (Canfield, Incredible Scofield, 220)
Canfield suggests that Wall Street lawyer Samuel Untermyer, who was also a member of the Lotus Club, may have played a role in Scofield‘s project, writing that “Scofield‘s theology was most helpful in getting Fundamentalist Christians to back the international interest in one of Untermyer‘s pet projects – the Zionist Movement.” (Canfield, Incredible Scofield, 219)
Professor David Lutz, in “Unjust War Theory: Christian Zionism and the Road to Jerusalem,” writes: “Untermyer used Scofield, a Kansas city lawyer with no formal training in theology, to inject Zionist ideas into American Protestantism. Untermyer and other wealthy and influential Zionists whom he introduced to Scofield promoted and funded the latter’s career, including travel in Europe.”
David Lutz, “Unjust War Theory: Christian Zionism and the Road to Jerusalem,” in Neo-Conned! Again: Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and the Rape of Iraq, ed.D. Liam O’Huallachain and J. Forrest Sharpe (Vienna, VA: Light in the Darkness Publications, 2005), 127-169.
According to the Untermyer Gardens Conservancy website, Untermyer “was a partner in the law firm of Guggenheimer, Untermyer & Marshall, and was the first lawyer in America to earn a one million dollar fee on a single case. He was also an astute investor, and became extremely wealthy.
He was instrumental in the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, was an influential Democrat and a close ally of Woodrow Wilson.
The bio continues: “Samuel Untermyer was one of the most prominent Jews of his day in America. He was a prominent Zionist, and was President of the Keren Hayesod. In addition, he was the national leader of an unsuccessful movement in the early 1930’s for a worldwide boycott of Germany, and called for the destruction of Hitler‘s regime.”
“Samuel Untermyer,” Untermyer Gardens Conservancy, accessed January 1, 2014,
Irish journalist Maidhc Ó Cathail suggests that “absent such powerful connections, it is hard to imagine ‘this peer among scalawags’ ever getting a contract with Oxford University Press to publish his bible.”
Maidhc O Cathail, “Zionism‘s Un-Christian Bible,” Middle East Online, November 25, 1999,
[xxiii] Donald Neff, “Christians Discriminated Against By Israel,” in Fifty Years of Israel (Michigan: American Educational Trust, 1998).
[xxiv] Stephen Green, Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel (Brattleboro: Amana, 1988), 20.
[xxv] Millar Burrows, Palestine Is Our Business (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1949), 116.
[xxvi] See citation 7.
[xxvii] Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007).
Masalha Nur, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948, 4th Ed. (Washington, DC: Inst. for Palestine Studies, 2001).
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle (London: Pluto, 2004).
Mazin Qumsiyeh, “Palestinian Refugees Right to Return and Repatriation” in Sharing the Land of Canaan (London: Pluto, 2004). Online at
[xxviii] Russell Warren Howe, “Fighting the ‘soldiers of Occupation’ From WWII to the Intifada,” in Seeing the Light: Personal Encounters with the Middle East and Islam, Ed. Richard H. Curtiss and Janet McMahon (Washington, D.C.: American Educational Trust, 1997), 38-39.
Warren and his film crew were filming an interview with Begin in 1974. “The red light had come on, under the lens. Without preamble, I turned my shoulder to the camera, stared straight into Begin’s eyes, and asked: ‘How does it feel, in the light of all that’s going on, to be the father of terrorism in the Middle East?’ ‘In the Middle East?’ he bellowed, in his thick, cartoon accent. ‘In all the world.’”
[xxix] McCarthy, Population of Palestine, 35.
[xxx] British Mandatory Commission, A Survey of Palestine: Prepared in December 1945 and January 1946 for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1991), 243-267.
This gives Jewish ownership in 1945 as approximately six percent.
Israeli author Baruch Kimmerling gives the landownership in 1947 as seven percent.
Robert J. Brym, review of Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics, by Baruch Kimmerling, The Canadian Journal of Sociology 11, no. 1 (1986), 80.
It is interesting to note that the Arab position was largely based on democratic principles. At a British conference on Palestine in 1946, Arabs presented a proposal “calling for the termination of the Mandate and the independence of Palestine as a unitary state, with a provisional governing council composed of seven Arabs and three Jews.” (Wilson, Decision on Palestine, 97)
[xxxiv] Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (Boston: South End, 1983), 161.
“In internal discussion in 1938 [David Ben-Gurion] stated that ‘after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine.’”
[xxxv] Neff, Pillars, 30-31.
[xxxvi] Neff, Pillars, 46-47.
[xxxvii] Berger, Memoirs, 21.
Berger writes that in a personal conversation with him, Henderson had said:
“I hope you and your associates will persevere. And my reason for wishing this is perhaps less related to what I consider American interests in the Middle East than what I fear I see on the domestic scene. The United States is a great power. Somehow it will surmount even its most foolish policy errors in the Middle East. But in the process there is a great danger of creating divisiveness and anti-Semitism among our own people. And if this danger materializes to a serious extent, we have seen in Germany and in Europe that the ability of a nation to survive the consequences is in serious question.”
[xxxviii] Richard D. McKinzie, “Oral History Interview with Edwin M. Wright,” Truman Library, Wooster, OH, July 26, 1974,
“Mr. Henderson was, therefore, told, ‘You’ve got to leave the State Department or the Zionists are going to keep after us.’ The State Department suggested he be sent as an ambassador to Turkey. The Zionists had a clearance process going and they said, ‘No, that’s too near the Middle East, we want to get him completely away from the Middle East.’ The result was that they sent him as ambassador to India to get him out of the area completely.”
[xxxix] Revealed during conversation with State Department associate.
Henry Francis Grady and John T. McNay, The Memoirs of Ambassador Henry F. Grady: from the Great War to the Cold War (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 2009). Online at
Benzion Netanyahu, a Zionist who travelled to the US from Palestine to propagandize Americans and father of future Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, tried – unsuccessfully – to use the Cold War as a rationale for the U.S. to support Israel. Netanyahu believed that “arguments appealing to American fears of Soviet expansion” would be the best way to win over U.S. officials. He used this argument in 1947 in meetings with Loy Henderson and General Dwight Eisenhower, but found no takers, (though Eisenhower arranged for him to meet with someone else). (Medoff, Militant Zionism, 146)
[xliv] Mulhall, America, 130.
Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson: a Life in the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), 215.
[xlv] Mark Perry, “Petraeus wasn’t the first,” Foreign Policy, April 2, 2010,
The paper speculated that the eventual goal was sovereignty over “Eretz Israel,” which included Transjordan and parts of Lebanon and Syria.
[xlvii] Green, Taking Sides, 20.
[xlviii] Neff, Pillars, 42-43.
[xlix] Neff, Pillars, 65. Citation: “Draft Memorandum by the Director of the Office of United Nations Affairs (Rusk) to the Under Secretary of State (Lovett),” Secret, Washington May 4, 1948, FRUS 1948, pp. 894-95.
We are Palestinian students and youth from the besieged Gaza Strip; we write to you now on a night engulfed by huge explosions ripping through our houses and neighborhoods again, more common than the thunder and hard rain also filling the night air.
And now we hear you plan on playing your inspiring music to a packed house in Hayarkon Park, Tel Aviv, a park built on the ruins of the Palestinian village Al Mirr, a land and people, destroyed and buried amidst unspeakable violence, but not forgotten. The residents of that Palestinian village and hundreds of other villages forcibly emptied by the nascent Israeli army, were either killed or denied return, denied the chance to even visit or commemorate the lives they once had. (1)
While the world turns its back, we hope that you don’t turn yours, that you heed the call of over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli regime until it abides by international law and stops denying us the right to live as any other human beings would expect. Just as you didn’t perform in Apartheid South Africa, just as you stood up against racism in the US South, just as you have so admirably supported indigenous rights in Canada against the drilling for Tar Sands, we ask you to support indigenous, displaced people wherever they may be, including we Palestinians. The words of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association in their recent move to boycott the Israeli regime echo the struggle for indigenous rights in America. (2)
As this letter is penned the sound of more Israeli bombing reverberates around the tight refugee camps and narrow alleys where we live. The camps are in complete darkness as the electricity has been cut. The Israeli siege and previous bombing of our only power-plant has lead to huge fuel shortages, leaving us with just 6 hours of electricity each day. This is just one night, but it is comparable to many other nights in Gaza, many worse nights. We are used to facing the wrath of Israeli Merkhava tanks, drones, shellings, bombs and snipers that have brutally murdered and maimed our people for decades, for the crime of being born Palestinians, the wrong “ethnic group” for the Israeli regime who since it was established has done everything to wipe us off the map.
Listening to music is difficult in these circumstances, despite our passion for it. We have our own big range of music we love to play and Debka dance. But we have few instruments. Israel’s air, land and sea blockade of all our borders has meant for years musical instruments were banned from entry to Gaza.[3] Other items denied to us were coriander, nutmeg, ginger, dried fruit, fresh meat, lentils, pasta, chocolate, fishing rods, cattle, toys, donkey, workbooks and newspapers. Dov Weisglass, an advisor to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explicitly outlined their intentions to collectively punish our population, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger”, he announced, in contravention of article 33 of the Geneva Conventions and condemned by all major human rights organizations. (4)
The violence behind Israel’s military occupation of our land is relentless and this week is no different. It began with Israeli border police shooting and killing a 38 year old Palestinian judge Raed Zeitar, the other bus passengers forced to sit and watch as he bled to death. Then 18-year-old Saji Darwish, Humanities student at Birzeit university, was shot in the head in Beitin, near Ramallah. Thousands attended his funeral the following day. Tuesday saw four more murdered in the West Bank and Gaza. On Wednesday Israeli authorities approved the construction of 387 housing units in the illegal settlement of Ramat Shlomo, denying the Palestinian towns of Beit Hanina and Shuafat the possibility to expand. And today a three-month old baby Ahmed Ammar Abu Nahal died of enlarged heart and liver as a result of the closure of Gaza crossings, a closure that has also left our hospitals bereft of medical supplies.
And right now we sit paralyzed in our homes as the bombs fall on us in Gaza. Who knows when the current attacks will end. Permanently etched on our minds are the rivers of blood that ran through the Gaza streets when for over 3 weeks in 2009 over 1400 were killed including over 330 children, with white phosphorous and other chemical weapons used in civilian areas and contaminating our land with a rise in cancers as a result. More recently 170 more were killed in the week-long attacks in late November 2012. How many more sleeping in their beds now will face the same fate in the coming days, weeks and months? The trauma, fear and uncertainty never goes away.
Over two thirds of the Palestinians here in Gaza are UN registered refugees. Over half of us are children. We or our descendants were dispossessed entirely and forcibly removed from our homes. The extent of this ethnic cleansing was such that one in three refugees worldwide is a Palestinian. Expulsions of Palestinians continue today especially in Jerusalem and the West Bank, places that we in Gaza are no longer able to visit. For what crime? The crime of being born Palestinian.
The Israeli regime denies us the freedom to come to enjoy your music, we live our lives surrounded by Navy Gunships along the sea, jeeps and wall tower snipers along the land frontier, and skies filled with the kind of aircraft unleashing yet more devastating attacks tonight. The Gaza Strip has been made an outdoor prison, a reality beyond which most youth can never imagine, because most can never leave.
Others are hearing us and the world is beginning to wake up. Many of your contemporaries are taking a stand including Carlos Santana, Roger Waters, Annie Lennox, Elvis Costello and the late, great Pete Seeger and Gil Scott Heron, who said he wouldn’t play in Israel “until everyone is welcome there”. (5)
As Israeli Apartheid week kicked off in South Africa this week, an event that has taken place in over 150 different locations worldwide, Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for the world to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions of Israel, just as many other Anti Apartheid heroes from South Africa have affirmed. Tutu said in his statement on Monday, “I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces. Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government.” (6) Long before he died, Nelson Mandela demanded that we should have the self determination of any other people. “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”, he said.
Will you sing “living with war” to an audience most of which will have served or are serving in the Israeli army that during the day were bombing our families, or manning the hundreds of checkpoints that make simple journeys daily acts of humiliation? While we in Gaza can never return to our homes that lay buried around the areas in which you will be travelling freely, will you sing, “A hundred voices from a hundred lands, need someone to listen. People are dying here and there.”
On the struggle to support First Nations rights in Canada and environmental protection you said: “If you have a conscience, you can`t go through your day without realizing what`s going on, and questioning it, and going, “Is this right?”(7)
This is the question to mull over as here in Gaza a short period of silence has descended after the bombs rained down on us yet again tonight Show the courage to say that this system of violent discrimination and racial segregation is unacceptable in Palestine, just as you showed it to be unacceptable in the American South, unacceptable in Apartheid South Africa and unacceptable for the Indigenous of the Americas.
Stand on the right side of history and stand with us, and don’t entertain apartheid Israel this July.
Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel
JERUSALEM – The Israel Antiquities Authority has destroyed several ancient archeological sites and antiquities as a result of a controversial dig in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage said Tuesday.
The authority recently began the final stage of archaeological excavations at the site, which is located in the Wadi Silweh area only 20 meters from the walls of the Old City, the foundation said in a statement on Tuesday.
As a result of the excavations, several ancient Islamic archeological sites and antiquities have been destroyed, including a cemetery that dated back to the Abbasid caliphate.
Additionally, the dig has damaged relics that date back to the Jebusite Canaanite era in the second millenium BC, the Al-Aqsa foundation alleged.
The excavations are the continuation of an Israeli project to build a biblical park in the area alongside the City of David archaeological park, and will feature a “museum of Jewish history” and a “Jewish national park.”
The excavation site measures around six dunams (1.5 acres) and runs 20 meters deep in some places.
The excavations are connected by a network of tunnels that “the Israeli occupation has been digging under and around Al-Aqsa Mosque,” the statement said, pointing out that the third-holiest site in Islam is located only 100 meters from the site itself.
The foundation said that the Ir David Foundation — commonly known as Elad — is funding the excavations as part of a plan to build a seven-story building which will serve as a Jewish cultural center.
The excavation site is located on what used to be private Palestinian land owned by the Siyam family from Silwan. The land was confiscated by Israeli authorities for the dig.
Israel frequently permits excavations and archaeological digs in East Jerusalem, specifically around the Al-Aqsa mosque and in the Silwan neighborhood, that threaten the structural integrity of Palestinian homes and holy sites in the area.
Critics charge that the digs search for ancient Jewish ruins at the expense of existing homes, and that Israeli archaeologists often ignore and even damage non-Jewish artifacts.
In 1967, Israel demolished the 800-year-old Moroccan Quarter of Jerusalem, displacing 650 Palestinians and destroying numerous mosques, homes, and holy sites, in order to build a plaza in front of the Western Wall.
Israel also evicted around 6,000 Palestinians from nearby areas in order to massively expand the city’s historical Jewish Quarter.
The internationally recognized Palestinian territories of which the West Bank and East Jerusalem form a part have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
Alison Weir’s new book is by far the most comprehensive and precise expose of the depth of Zionist interference with American life in general and the politics of the United States in particular. It is a book every American should obtain, read and discuss openly.
In spite of its succinctness, the book is saturated with information and insights that are backed by valuable historical references and primary source quotes. Since I am an avid reader of modern Jewish history, I was surprised to learn so much from such a relatively short text.
The story that is told by Weir is devastating – for more than a century, a matrix of Jewish political lobbies, pressure groups, media operators and agents within the American government and legal system have been dominating the United States’ public life as well as its foreign policy. Consequently, the United States has been operating against its own best interests. It has compromised its most precious principles and even its own security.
For many years, it was largely Jews and people of the Left who dominated the Anti Zionist discourse. The outcome is very clear. The criticism of Zionism and Israel was partial and Judeo-centric by nature. It evaded broad scrutiny of Jewish power and the tribal operation involved. The majority of anti Zionist texts were designed to vindicate the Jews of crimes committed by the Jewish State and Zionism. Consequently, the anti Zionist discourse achieved very little as far as Palestinians are concerned. In fact, it was successful in diverting attention from the root cause of the conflict in the Middle East.
Weir however, approaches the topic from a completely different perspective. Weir is an American patriot. She examines the extensive Zionist operation that hijacked her country and robbed the United States of its most precious values. Weir points out that time after time there has been an ethical and political clash between American national interests and the policies dictated by the Jewish pressure groups.
Against Our Better Judgment throws light on the depth, intensity and the efficiency of Zionist operators within America. The book reveals a ferocious, unified and coordinated campaign by the Zionists, and it is far from clear that the American people can find the political and cultural means to deal with this form of foreign and immoral intervention. Weir’s new book is a crucial and bold step in an attempt of a nation to restore its immune system.
Occupied Palestine – Yesterday the Hares Boys, who are being charged with 20 counts of attempted murder with no evidence whatsoever, have been in an Israeli prison for one year. Now is more important than ever to fully understand the circumstances surrounding the unlawful arrest and imprisonment of Mohammad Suleiman, Ammar Souf, Mohammed Kleib, Tamer Souf, and Ali Shamlawi.
The car accident
At around 18:30 on Thursday 14 March 2013, a car crashed into the back of a truck on Road 5 in Salfit Governorate, occupied Palestine. The driver and her 3 daughters were injured, one of them – seriously. The driver, Adva Biton, was going back to the illegal Israeli settler colony of Yakir when the accident occurred. She later claimed the accident was due to Palestinian youth throwing stones at her car. The driver of the truck, having testified immediately after the accident that he had pulled over because of a flat tyre, later changed his mind and said he had seen stones by the road.
There were no witnesses to the car accident. Nobody had seen any children or youth throwing stones that day.
The arrests
In the early hours of Friday 15 March 2013, masked Israeli soldiers, some with attack dogs, stormed the village of Hares, which is close to Road 5. More than 50 soldiers broke the doors of the villagers’ houses, demanding the whereabouts of their teenage sons. Ten boys were arrested that night, blindfolded, handcuffed, and transferred to an unknown location. The families were not informed of their sons’ alleged wrongdoings.
Two days later, a second wave of violent arrests took place. At around 3 o’clock in the morning, the Israeli army, accompanied by the Shabak (the Israeli secret service), entered the homes of 3 Palestinian adolescents. They had a piece of paper with their names in Hebrew. After forcing all the family members into one room, taking away their phones so that they wouldn’t call for help, and interrogating them, the soldiers handcuffed their sons, all aged 16-17.
“Kiss and hug your mother goodbye,” a Shabak agent told one boy. “You may never see her again.”
A week later, Israeli army jeeps again entered the village and arrested several boys, who had just come back home from school. The soldiers lined all of them up, including a 6-year-old, and threatened at gunpoint their uncle who pleaded for the soldiers to at least release the youngest children. The army then randomly chose 3 boys, handcuffed them behind their backs, blindfolded them, and took them away. The families were not informed about either the allegations against their children, or their exact location.
In total, 19 boys from the neighbouring villages of Hares and Kifl Hares were arrested in relation to the settler car accident. None of them had previously had any history of stone-throwing. After violent interrogations, most of the minors were released, except for five, who remain in Megiddo, an Israeli adult prison.
These are the Hares Boys.
The interrogation
The arrested boys were subjected to a series of abuse and ill-treatment that accounts as torture. Upon detention, they were kept in solitary confinement for up to two weeks. One boy, since released, described his cell: a windowless hole 1m wide and 2m long; there was no mattress or blanket to sleep on; toilet facilities were dirty; the six lights were kept on continuously, leading to the boy losing track of the time of the day; the food made him feel ill. The boy was denied lawyer; he was interrogated violently three times during three days, and eventually released after found not guilty at the trial.
Other boys have also told their lawyers of very similar treatment. They “confessed” of stone-throwing after being repeatedly abused in prison and during interrogations.
The charges
The five boys from Hares are charged with 25 counts of attempted murder each, apparently 1 count for every alleged stone thrown at passing cars. The Israeli military prosecution insists that the boys consciously “intended to kill”; the boys can face the maximum punishment for attempted murder: 25 years to life imprisonment.
The prosecution’s case relies on the boys’ “confessions”, which have been obtained under torture, and 61 “witnesses,” some of which claim that their cars have been damaged by stones on that same day on Road 5. The latter only appeared after the car accident got a lot of media coverage as a “terrorist act”, and the Israeli prime minister Benyamin Natanyahu announced, after the boys’ arrest, that he “caught the terrorists that did it”. Other “witnesses” include the police and the Shabak, who were not even present at that location at the time. It is not clear whether the 61 “witnesses” have been properly questioned and their claims verified with, for example, hospital admission data, or even if the alleged damage to their vehicles has been photographed or otherwise documented. Such information is not even available to the boys’ attorneys.
The implications
If the boys are convicted, this case would set a legal precedent which would allow the Israeli military to convict any Palestinian child or youngster for attempted murder in cases of stone-throwing.
The boys are now 16-17 years old. If the Israeli military get their way, the boys would only return to their homes and their families at the age of 41 – at best. Five young lives ruined with no evidence of their guilt is a spit in the face to our common principles of justice as human beings.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS?
Almost every stage of this case that could go wrong, did. Local and international law has been mostly dismissed; principles of justice barely fading in the horizon; respect for human beings non-existent.
Consider this:
The Hares Boys, as well as thousands of other Palestinian youngsters, are treated in the Israeli military court system as adults. According to international human rights law in general, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in particular, adults are people over 18 years of age. Israel treats even 9-year-olds as adults.
The racist system of “justice”: no matter the alleged crime, Palestinians are forced to go through the military courts and are tried under military law, while Israelis fall into the civil court system for the same crimes.
Violently arresting children at night without giving any explanation to their families about the reasons behind it, nor informing them about their children’s whereabouts goes against Israel’s own laws which state that minors are to be accompanied by an adult family member when detained or arrested.
The denial of lawyer for several days (in some cases weeks) after detention also accounts as a major violation of Israel’s own rules.
Children being put into solitary confinement for days on end is a form of torture; It is a severe punishment before the verdict.
Abusive interrogations of scared minors is considered torture.
The boys were arrested despite a total lack of evidence against them and condemned by the Israeli media as “terrorists”, which goes against the universal presumption of innocence (innocent until found guilty) and delivers a guilty verdict in the highly bombastic public trial, putting pressure on the judges to do likewise.
For more detailed accounts of the initial arrests and interrogations, please see IWPS Human Rights Reports from the ground:
At-Tuwani, Occupied Palestine – On Sunday March 16, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and Internationals on Palestinian fields near Mitzpe Yair illegal outpost.
In the morning, four Palestinian shepherds from the village of Qawawis were grazing their flocks south of the Israeli outpost of Mitzpe Yair, when a settler arrived armed with an iron pipe to threaten them shouting. At 9:18 am two Internationals arrived together with two further Palestinian shepherds. The armed Israeli settler then left when he saw that they were filming the scene.
At 9:28 am eight settlers arrived from the illegal outpost – one was still armed with the iron pipe – and four of them violently chased away the flocks, pushing them toward the valley underlying the outpost. Palestinian shepherds followed the settlers in order not to lose their flocks accompanied by Internationals. The Palestinians immediately called the Israeli police.
At 9:48 am the settlers came back to the outpost. In the meantime, an additional International and two Palestinian members of the South Hebron Hills Popular Committee arrived at the scene. At 10:00 am one of the settlers tried to chase away one of the newly-arrived Palestinians, a member of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. As this happened, an Israeli policeman and three Israeli soldiers arrived by foot. At 10:20 am, as the policeman began interrogating the attendants, a further three settlers arrived. Those interrogated were the Palestinian shepherd Nail Abuaram (who filmed everything with a B’Tselem camera) and one International.
At 10:45 am, the policeman lead Abuaram and one of the Internationals to Kiryat Arba police station to give testimony of the harassments. They arrived at the station at noon.
The International was asked for the camera footage of the incident, interrogated and finally released at around 2:50 pm. Abuaram was interrogated alone for a couple of hours and was threaten of arrest until he accepted to sign a paper stating that he will not get closer than 450 meters to the area where the harassment took place for a period of 15 days. He was later released around 6:00 pm after signing the paper. The Israeli police forced the settler who attacked the Palestinians with an iron pipe to stay 200 meters far from the spot where the harassment took place for a period of 15 days.
Palestinian communities of the South Hebron Hills area are strongly involved in using nonviolence as a way to resist the Israeli occupation.
Operation Dove has maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani and the South Hebron Hills since 2004.
[Note: According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Hague Regulations, the International Court of Justice, and several United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements and outposts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Most settlement outposts, including Havat Ma’on (Hill 833), are considered illegal also under Israeli law.]
Having studied enough American Indian Tribes over the years, I have grown accustomed to creation myths that each Tribe assigns itself as its reason for being. And the definition of “chutzpah” that I’ve been taught is that of a young man on trial for murdering his parents, who throws himself on the mercy of the Court on grounds that he is an orphan.
That, as Alison Weir has made clear, is Israel’s situation. In Against Our Better Judgment, Ms. Weir writes with great clarity how the Zionist movement was able to move politicians, both in America and in England, to legalize a most illegal act–that of stealing an entire nation, and crying foul when those from whom it was stolen complained, then tried to retake the land.
Ms. Weir’s in depth research to expose Zionist actions in earlier times provides a solid basis for her conclusions about creating Israel from a land called Palestine. And she documents the intense lobbying done by Israel’s Zionist creators in order to legalize an action that was clearly illegal.
We are now living with the consequences of that bit of grand theft, i.e., the continuing violence in the Middle East, affecting everything America might want to do in the Middle East. We only recently have witnessed Bibi Netanyahu’s so far failed effort to have America invade and conquer Iran, a country that obviously is too much of a mouthful for Israel to bite off. Suddenly, even Barak Obama recognizes the danger in following Israel’s advice on how to conduct itself in the Middle East. The President tiptoed to the edge of the abyss but backed away when Israel’s trained seals in the U.S. Congress tried to push the nation over the edge.
We saw Congressional supporters of Israel shamefully initiating the dozens of applauses by the Joint Session of Congress when they entertained Prime Minister Netanyahu, who obliged the assembled mass with aggressive applause lines, designed to favor those who have a liking of violence and to show how Israel is “America’s staunchest ally” in the Middle East.
During the 1970s, when I was a member of the U.S. Senate, I was waiting my turn to testify on the Middle East situation before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As is the custom, the Administration witness was testifying ahead of me. I do not recall his name, but I felt very sorry for him when New York’s Senator Javits asked from the dais, “Please explain why Israel is our most important ally in the Middle East.”
The poor fellow did not have an answer. Granted, he was a lower level State Department official, but his lack of an answer was indicative of the lack of a story provided to him by his seniors in the State Department.
So Sen. Javits asked him again, and again, and again, trying to have a statement from some government official which Israel’s Lobby could use in its propaganda campaign to maintain Israel’s lofty position in the American mind. But the State Department official was unable to find an answer, which left Sen. Javits and his cohorts to try some other avenue. The Israel-is-a-vital-ally shibboleth has since been made into an overused slogan by supporters of Israel.
But each time I hear that phrase, “staunchest ally,” I think of the American sailors on the U.S.S. Liberty, who, during the 1967 Israeli-Arab War, died when the Israeli military was order to destroy its “ally’s” intelligence ship. During that act of friendship, America’s staunchest ally killed some 34 American sailors, and wounded another 170.
I also think of Jonathan Pollard, an American employee of our Pentagon, who sold what has been described as “a truckload” of the Pentagon’s secrets to Israel. I say “sold,” because Israel paid Pollard for the secrets, which Israel then traded to the Soviet Union for that country’s relaxation of rules with respect to Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union to Israel.
With Ms. Weir’s well researched history in mind, I am forced to think of the cadre of American journalists who lately have assigned “oil” as the reason for George Bush’s Folly–the invasion of Iraq in 2003. They say nothing of the well known fact that George Bush had a number of Israel’s supporters giving him advice on the issue of Iraq. I’ve lost count of the billions of American dollars that were sucked up by that war, as well as the precious American lives that were lost to satisfy Israel’s agents in the Bush Administration, those who convinced President Bush to do something that Israel wanted, but knowing it was better if “America did it.” President Obama should be applauded for refusing to fall into the same trap with respect to Syria.
This provocative book documents a history that is essential in understanding today’s world. Scholarly, yet readable, it is a must for all Americans. We all need to know what we have spent by coddling Israel and its aggressions, and why the cost has become more than we have bargained for.
James Abourezk is a former U.S. Senator from South Dakota who plunged into the Middle East morass when he saw the cost to our country of Israel’s efforts to connive to have our country do Israel’s dirty work. His memoir, Advise & Dissent, has recently been re-published, along with a new Introduction by Sen. Fred Harris.
The Israeli Haaretz newspaper unveiled, Thursday morning, that an Israeli soldier pointed his gun at a handcuffed Palestinian boy, during an investigation after arresting him in Nabi Saleh village, near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
The Al Ray newspaper pointed out that Israeli forces arrested four boys from Nabi Saleh village three weeks ago, under the pretext of throwing stones.
He (one suspect) was led to Benjamin police station for investigation.
There, one of the soldiers who participated in the arrest attended, and was filmed while directing his gun towards the boy in the interrogation room. The soldier left the room after investigation officers arrived, the newspaper added.
It was noted, by the court, that the documentation of the stone-throwing incident is not professional, and that the boys’ identities are in doubt.
For 46 years the bridge connecting the West Bank with Jordan has been a source of hardships, humiliations and extremely long and unnecessary delays, not to mention cumbersome and exaggerated body and baggage searches.
This nightmare has to end.
What happened on March 10 is a symptom of the occupation versus occupied paradigm that must come to an end.
A 38-year-old Jordanian father of two and a sitting judge in Amman’s Court of First Instance, attempted to travel to Nablus like many Palestinians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin. His altercation with Israeli soldiers that ended with his death must be a warning flag that this injustice and humiliation cannot continue.
Anyone who crosses the King Hussein Bridge knows very well how the Israelis have for decades forged a shameful occupier-occupied relationship with the power of their guns. The Oscar-winning film Twelve Years a Slave, perfectly illustrates the way that the oppressed absorb all kinds of humiliation simply in order to survive as they wait for salvation.
Raed Zuaiter, the Jordanian judge, like any other human being, apparently walked into this mess without the added shield of years of humiliation and he couldn’t accept it.
For their part, the Israeli soldiers, brainwashed to suspect every passenger as a potential “terrorist,” viewed the rebellion against accepting the occupier-occupied paradigm as enough proof that the rebellious person must be a terrorist. As they say, the rest is history.
The Israeli spin machine quickly went into action. The often repeated defense was that Zuaiter went for the soldier’s gun. Later it was adjusted that he went for his throat, attempting to strangle him. The “terrorist” label also required some audio. So again the spin machine fabricated that the judge yelled “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar” before lunging for the soldier’s gun (or throat), thus confirming that he was a terrorist.
Of course much of the speculation as to what happened and when could easily be put to rest if footage from the most camera-covered spot at the bridge (the first few meters into the Israeli controlled area) is made available. But alas, the camera is now said to have been inoperative that day. How convenient.
But there is a tiny fact that is hard to refute. How did the bus carrying Zuaiter enter the Israeli occupied territories. A metal bar and four metal pistons make it impossible for any vehicle to enter until someone presses a remote-controlled button. The buttons are located in a windowless room with lots of cameras that show the operators who is coming, what license plate they hold and so on.
Naturally, addressing the problem that caused the untimely death of an innocent Jordanian is currently focused on the logistics and mechanics of what happened, but there is a need to look at the context of what is happening and how to avoid the recurrence of such trigger-happy acts.
In the negotiations about the implementation of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians insisted that even during the interim period no Israeli soldier should have any face-to-face contact with passengers. The Israelis designed a plan where they sit behind one-way mirrors and control the bridge from this vantage point.
The plan, which included the presence of unarmed Palestinian police, was operational for a short time at the end of the 1990s but was scrapped when the second Intifada broke in October 2000. Since then the call to return to the pre-October status throughout the occupied territories and on the bridge has been made repeatedly but no action was taken. The roadmap included a section for the return of the Palestinian police to the bridge, but this was never implemented.
In addition to the need to keep brainwashed, heavily armed young Israeli soldiers as far away from traveling civilians as possible, there are other decisions that can help reduce the tension on the bridge. For example, the crossing should be open around the clock in order to ease the long waiting period that add to the anger and frustration.
Israelis say that they can’t cover the cost of 24-hour staff but many Palestinians think that they don’t care while others believe that this is deliberate to maintain the occupier-occupied paradigm.
The best and most effective way to reduce the tensions and tragedies such as the murder of the Jordanian judge, is to end the occupation and totally remove the unwanted Israeli occupiers from Palestinian territories.
In the meantime, people of goodwill must agree that the current status quo on the King Hussein Bridge is untenable. Serious and deep changes are required in order to guarantee that what happened on March 10 to an innocent Jordanian will not take place again.
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and former professor of journalism at Princeton University.
Veolia is a French company specialising in environmental work in the fields of water, recycling, energy and transportation. The company has recently had a lot of media coverage given its contribution to supporting Israeli settlements.
The company has been registered by international activists concerned with the Palestinian cause on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) list since 2005, “due to their immoral work serving the occupation in various areas in Palestine”.
Currently it is involved in a railway project in Jerusalem that links the illegal West Bank settlements and Jerusalem which is considered one of the occupation’s main means and an important step in the context of the Judaisation of Jerusalem project and the expansion of settlements in the city. It not only transports Israelis passing through, but also facilitates access between the new Israeli settlements and the settlers as a means of easing settlements and outlining a mechanism and infrastructure for its expansion. This is considered a violation of the Geneva Accords which prohibit the occupation from transporting its citizens to occupied territories, so this is not only a clear violation of Palestinian rights, but also a violation of international agreements made in this regard.
Veolia’s activity ranges between environment workshops, water and transportation, as it works through one of its subsidiaries (T.M. M.) and Tovlan Landfill, near Jericho, as a report by Corporate Watch Research Group, specialising in monitoring the work of international companies, stated the violations made by Veolia with regards to the management of the landfill. Veolia buries the waste of 21 settlements in the landfill near the Jordanian border, this has many health and environmental “side effects” on neighbouring Arab villages such as Fasayil and Abu Al `Ajaj, leading to the displacement of the residents of the latter, the population dropping to 200 residents from thousands in 1999, the year the landfill was established.
There are also those who leave their homes during the summer only to return in winter when the smell from the landfill is not as strong. The livestock, which is the main source of income for locals, also suffered big losses.
The residents of these villages are also deprived of electricity, while the residents in settlements have electricity and water at discounted rates in order to motivate them to live in settlements. The recycling of the waste in the landfill contributes to the provision of electric energy by means of renewable energy.
Who works in the landfill? Palestinians work in the landfill and they are deprived of any labour rights, as their wages are half the minimum wages set for Israeli workers and they are deprived of work and health insurance.
The company also has shares in the bus routes, such as route 109 and 110, which provide transportation for settlers on Highway 433 in the West Bank running through the settlements. The occupation enforces apartheid/segregation rules on highway 433, as Palestinians are not allowed to use the highway.
Veolia is also involved in facilitating Israeli exclusion operations, as well as facilitating the transfer of settlement waste, transporting it to Palestinian areas and causing many long-term health and geographic problems. This has encouraged the indirect expulsion of Palestinians, all of which has contributed to the process of racial segregation in transportation in those areas.
Similarly, it has recently provided water and sanitation services to many of the Israeli occupation’s settlements in the occupied West Bank, including the Modi’in Ilit settlement located between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in the occupied Palestinian territories.
This means that three out of Veolia’s four subsidiaries – water, waste and transportation – actively work to support settlements.
Veolia’s activities are considered a flagrant violation of international law, specifically Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which states that “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
International law also prohibits Israel from using occupied land for its own benefit and, therefore, burying waste from the settlements in the occupied territories is a violation of United Nations Resolution 63/201 dated January 28, 2009, which:
“Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, not to exploit, damage, cause loss or depletion of, or endanger the natural resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.
Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to comply strictly with its obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, with respect to the alteration of the character and status of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.
Also calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to cease the dumping of all kinds of waste materials in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.”
In addition to violating international law, Veolia’s acts violate the resolution of the Arab summit in Khartoum, in March 2006, which provides for the following:
The condemnation of the project aiming to link West Jerusalem to the occupied West Bank through occupied East Jerusalem and the stressing of the illegality of this project. It also calls on the two French companies [Alstom and Veolia] to immediately withdraw from the project and demands punitive measures be taken against them if they don’t comply. The Arab Summit also urged the French government to take the necessary measures in this respect to honour its obligations under international law.
To top this all off, Veolia’s activity in the occupied territories contradicts the company’s declared goals and strategies which aim to “reduce the negative environmental impacts of waste” and “help raise the citizens’ standard of living.”
It is clear that Veolia selectively applies these goals, as it only aims to raise the standard of living of the settlers, at the expense of the Palestinians and in violation of international treaties and the most basic human rights.
This company’s long history of racism and the oppression of the Palestinians’ rights was enough to convince the public opinion in different parts of the world to boycott it.
The campaign to reduce the company’s activity and completely boycott it was successful in impacting its work, which has suffered due to losses estimated at more than $12 billion over the past six years in order to prevent the renewal or signing of new contracts in many countries worldwide. These include Australia, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland and finally England. In addition to this, a coalition of boroughs in south-west London refused to bid on the tender offered by Veolia for a £1 billion waste removal deal last April. In January 2009, Veolia lost a contract worth €3.5 billion Euros to run the metro in Stockholm.
In addition to the efforts made globally to boycott this company and reduce its activity, French company Alstom, a company working in partnership with Veolia on the Jerusalem railway project, linking Jerusalem and the settlements, lost the second phase of the Saudi Haramain Railway project, which connects Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. This is in spite of the fact that the company had previously won the contract for the first phase. The value of the second phase contract is about $10 billion.
Since the end of 2008, the BDS National Committee, along with its partners, have made popular, official and media efforts in order to convince the Saudi authorities to exclude Alstom from the Haramain Railway deal due to its involvement in the Israeli occupation’s projects aiming to Judaise Jerusalem. Many letters and documents to this effect were sent to official parties in Saudi Arabia from the BDS Committee, as well as several official, popular, Palestinian, Islamic and international parties in the context of a coordinated campaign targeting this company.
Veolia in Saudi Arabia
Despite all of the information mentioned above, all the background information, business links, relations with the Israeli occupation and settlement operations, as well as its direct involvement in facilitating the expansion of settlements and the Judaisation of Jerusalem, and in spite of the boycott exercised by British and other organisations and governorates against Veolia, it has continued to operate and make outrageous profits in Saudi Arabia for years.
The company’s work in Saudi Arabia is narrowed down to the fields of water, sanitation and water desalination. It exists in Saudi Arabia through the Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies, Saudi Industries Ltd, with branches in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam. Veolia also operates in Saudi Arabia under the Sidem Saudi Ltd, one of Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies, Saudi Industries Ltd’s subsidiaries, which has branches in Jeddah, Khobar and Jubail. Sidem specialises in designing and building large desalination plants.
Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies, Saudi Industries Ltd has landed many large contracts with the Saudi government in recent years. The two contracts worth noting are the desalination plant contract with the Power and Water Utility Company for Jubail and Yanbu, signed in 2007, and the management, operation and maintenance of the water and sanitation sector deal in the Saudi capital Riyadh, signed in 2008.
In 2007, Veolia signed a contract with the Power and Water Utility Company for Jubail and Yanbu to establish one of the largest water desalination plants in the world worth $945 million. One year before signing the deal, Saudi Arabia signed the Arab Summit resolution in Khartoum.
Furthermore, Veolia has landed 62 water desalination contracts in Saudi Arabia since 2007. In 2008, Veolia signed a large contract with the National Water Company to manage, operate and maintain the water and sanitation in the Saudi capital Riyadh. Veolia expects this deal to achieve a $60 million profit.
In December 2011, Veolia signed a contract with the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals to establish research centres in the Dhahran Techno Valley.
While Alstom – Veolia’s partner in the Judaisation of Jerusalem project and the Jerusalem railway project, connecting Jerusalem to the settlements – lost the second phase of the Haramain Railway project worth about $10 billion, Veolia (in full partnership with Alstom) is signing contracts worth billions of dollars in Saudi Arabia, despite its blatant violation of international law and the rights of the Palestinians.
Veolia has been working in Israel before it entered the Saudi market, and its involvement in settlements began very early on, before it made any deals with the Saudi government.
It is both embarrassing and astonishing that Veolia’s involvement in the settlements was not taken into account when it was awarded these huge business deals in Saudi Arabia and that the vast global BDS campaign against Alstom and Veolia in 2011 did not impact Veolia’s operations in Saudi Arabia, as the company signed an agreement with the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in December of the same year.
It is also shameful that at a time when international companies and parties are taking a stance against this company for violating the most basic human rights in Palestine and its participation in the brutal Israeli occupation and settlement, the Saudi government is signing contracts with the same company in various business areas. This in a country which is supposedly a leader in the belief in Palestinian rights, as well as protecting such liberties and condemning all human rights violations during this serious Palestinian tragedy.
A company with such a shameful history of working to enhance Israeli settlements should not find a work environment that opens the doors to trading in a country like Saudi Arabia, which has a long history of supporting the Palestinian cause.
While Veolia is losing billions of dollars in contracts in Stockholm and London, it is signing a billion dollar deal in Jubail and making profits of up to $60 million dollars in Riyadh!
The least that is expected of Saudi Arabia is not to sign contracts with Veolia, to pressure the company and make it choose between carrying out its responsibilities in accordance with international law, stop supporting the settlements and violating the rights of the Palestinians or to get out of Saudi Arabia and cease all forms of business with it.
Something sinister is brewing around and below al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, and it has the hallmark of a familiar Israeli campaign to strip the Mosque of its Muslim Arab identity. This time around, however, the stakes are much higher.
The status of al-Aqsa mosque is unparalleled within the context of Muslim heritage in Palestine itself. It is also the third holiest Muslim shrine anywhere. But equally as important, it is a symbol of faith, resistance and defiance. Its story of struggle and perseverance goes hand in hand with the very modern Palestinian struggle for rights, freedom and identity. Praying at al-Aqsa at times seems like an impossible feat. Many Palestinians lost life or limbs simply trying to gain access to the mosque.
In a statement released on March 7, the Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs said Israeli forces carried out 30 attacks against Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy sites during the month of February alone. Most of the attacks targeted Al-Aqsa itself. While the recurring violations at Al-Aqsa were led by Jewish settlers, according to the statement, they have done so under the watchful eye, protection and support of the Israeli police and army.
Most alarming about these attacks is their political context, which indicates that a great degree of coordination is underway between politicians, security forces and Jewish settlers.
In anticipation of a Palestinian backlash, on March 04, an Israeli court sentenced Islamic leader Sheikh Rade Saleh to eight months in prison for ‘incitement’. The Sheikh is the most outspoken Palestinian leader regarding the danger facing Al-Aqsa. Why silence Sheik Saleh now when the attacks against al-Aqsa are at an all time high?
It was on February 25, 1994, that US-born Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein stormed into the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of al-Khalil (Hebron) and opened fire. The aim was to kill as many Arabs as he could.
At that moment, nearly 800 Muslim worshipers were kneeling down during the dawn prayer in the holiest month of the Muslim Calendar; Ramadan. He killed up to 30 people and wounded over 120. Exactly 20 years later, the Israeli army stormed al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest Muslim site, and opened fire. The timing was no accident.
Like the rest of the West Bank, Al-Khalil is facing the dual challenge of armed Jewish settlers and Israeli occupation soldiers; the latter enforcing the military occupation, while providing further protection to the settlers. The settlers, extremists from the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba, often attack Palestinian residents of the town with complete impunity. Interestingly, many of Kiryat Arba settlers are Americans, as was Baruch Goldstein.
It was not enough that Israeli soldiers within the vicinity of the Ibrahimi Mosque allowed Goldstein – armed with a Galil rifle and other weapons – access to the mosque, but they opened fire on worshipers as they tried to flee the scene. Israeli soldiers killed 24 more and injured others. Goldstein, now a hero in the eyes of many in Israel, is often blamed solely for the massacre in al-Khalil. But in fact, it was a mutual effort between Goldstein and the Israeli army.
This symbiotic relationship between the army and settlers, which dates back to the early days of the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, continues.
While Israeli bulldozers dig into Palestinian land during the day, leveling mounds of ground and destroying olive groves for settlement expansion, heavy machinery burrows beneath the Old City of al-Quds, Jerusalem, at night. The Israelis are looking for evidence of what they believe to be ancient Jewish temples, presumably destroyed in 586BC and AD70. To fulfil “prophecy”, Jewish extremists believe that a third temple must be built. But of course, there is the inconvenient fact that on that particular spot exists one of Islam’s holiest sites: The Noble Sanctuary, or al-Haram al-Sharif. It has been an exclusively Muslim prayer site for the last 1,300 years.
The Noble Sanctuary, located in Jerusalem’s Old City, is the home of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. The site has been under constant threat, attacks, acts of arson and military violence for nearly five decades. The few Muslim clergy – belonging to the Islamic Trust which manages the area, along with the custodianship of Jordan – are mindful of the ever-lurking Israeli threat that oftentimes turns deadly. It was no surprise that late Israeli leader Ariel Sharon chose that exact place to carry out his proactive ‘tour’ of al-Aqsa compound in 2000. Many unarmed Palestinians, mostly worshipers, died on that day. Thousands more were lost in the following months and years as the entirety of the occupied territories and Palestinian towns inside Israel exploded with unprecedented fury. Sharon was later elected Prime Minister of Israel.
That same dangerous combination – rightwing politicians allied with religious zealots – is at work once more. They are eying Al-Aqsa for annexation, the same way the Israeli government is laboring to permanently annex large swathes of the occupied West Bank, to preclude any future settlement with the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli Knesset (Parliament) chose the 20th anniversary of the Goldstein massacre of Palestinians in al-Khalil to begin a debate concerning the status of Al-Aqsa compound. Right-wingers – which constitute the bulk in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – want the Israeli government to enforce its ‘sovereignty’ over the Muslim site, which is administered by Jordan per the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty of 1994. Israeli MP Moshe Feiglin, is the man behind the move, but he is not alone. Feiglin is a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, and has strong backing within the party, the government and the Knesset.
A major backer of Feiglin’s initiative is Miri Regev, also a far-right Likud member. Regev is demanding that the government establish separate prayer times for both Jews and Muslims in Al-Aqsa Compound. The model she wishes to duplicate is no other than the Ibrahimi Mosque. “We will reach a situation where the Temple Mount will be like the Cave of the Patriarchs, days for Jews and days for Muslims,” she said.
Of course, Regev omitted the fact that 20 years ago to the day, a Jewish extremist and Israeli troops killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinians kneeling for prayer.
On the next day following the Israeli government debate, a thundering sound was heard around 3 AM in the Wadi Hilweh neighborhood of Silwan, located south of the Old City of Jerusalem. Residents heard the “sounds of heavy duty machines digging under their houses throughout the night,” Ma’an reported. Then, a large wall suddenly collapsed, while a few houses sustained damage. The Israeli underground network of tunnels is growing, as some of these tunnels connect Wadi Hilweh to the Western Wall to Al-Aqsa.
While the danger of Al-Aqsa Mosque collapsing is very real, it is a representation of the mentality that rules Israel: one of annexation and military occupation, with no regard whatsoever to Palestine’s holiest site, also revered by over 1.6 billion Muslims around the world.
– Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).
BETHLEHEM – Dozens of rockets launched from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel on Wednesday, a day after an Israeli airstrike killed three Palestinian militants in the coastal enclave.
The al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for the operation, which it has named “Breaking the Silence.”
The group said that it had launched 90 rockets into Israel on Wednesday, saying: “The response has begun to the crimes of the occupation, the latest of which was the killing of three members” of the group on Tuesday.
An Israeli military source said that eight rockets had fallen in residential areas, causing property damage but without resulting in any injuries.
Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman told an Israeli television channel that there was no option other than completely re-occupying the Gaza Strip, arguing that after two wide-scale military operations “Israeli towns and cities” are still under fire from the Gaza Strip.
The residents of southern Israeli towns and cities cannot remain under the the threat of “terrorist” organizations, he added.
An Israeli source said that crews had found the fragments of nearly 57 rockets. The source also said that the Iron Dome missile-defense system had intercepted three rockets.
According to Israeli reports, rockets landed in open areas near the town of Sderot and near residential areas.
A senior Israeli security source told AFP that 50 rockets had been launched toward Israel and that the rockets had not ceased, but that there were no immediate reports of casualties.
Warning sirens sounded in Israeli towns and cities near the border.
An Israeli officer told Israeli army radio that “we haven’t seen such a barrage (of rockets) in the last two years.”
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that “damage” had been caused but not injuries, and that “police units” were searching “open areas.”
A day earlier, an Israeli airstrike killed three Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip, medics said.
The three resistance fighters were killed by the airstrike in southeast Khan Younis near the Sufa crossing.
The al-Quds Brigades said at the time that the militants were affiliated to the group.
“They were in confrontation with the occupation trying to stop the progress of Israeli military vehicles which were approaching the area,” the statement said.
The Israeli army said in a statement that “terrorists affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the southern Gaza Strip fired a mortar shell at IDF forces.”
“An IAF aircraft responded immediately in order to prevent further attacks on Israeli civilians and targeted the terrorist squad. Direct hits were confirmed, the army statement said.
Also Tuesday morning, an Israeli drone fell in the area of the attack.
The airstrikes came just hours after Palestinian security sources said a man died after Israeli soldiers fired at him while he was driving near the West Bank city of Tulkarem.
The Israeli army also killed two Palestinians in the West Bank on Monday.
Israeli soldiers shot and killed 18-year-old Saji Darwish near Ramallah late Monday, after he allegedly threw stones at Israeli vehicles.
Earlier, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian-Jordanian judge at the Allenby Bridge crossing with Jordan.
Former Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey was warned by loyalist paramilitaries that they were once tasked with murdering him in an assassination plot purportedly dreamt up by the British secret service.
The sensational disclosure was sent in a letter to the Irish government, newly released under the Public Records Act, which requires documents of historical value to be published by the National Archives within 30 years.
Written on Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) signature paper, the warning claims the terrorist organization was asked by an MI5 operative about the prospect of carrying out an attack on Republic of Ireland leader Haughey in 1985.
At the time, Haughey would have been in opposition as head of political party Fianna Fáil, but details of the solicitation did not become known to Irish authorities until 1987.
“In 1985 we were approached by a M15 officer attached to the Northern Ireland Office and based in Lisburn, Alex Jones was his supposed name,” the letter reads, according to the Irish Times. “He asked us to execute you.”… continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Israel-Palestine, reports in detail on Zionist attacks on Christian sites in May 1948, the month of Israel’s birth.
